Castelbel Porto, scented soaps and room fragrances from Portugal
Castelbel Porto is a Portuguese maker of soaps, reed diffusers, scented candles and body care, based in Castêlo da Maia in the Greater Porto area. It was founded in 1999 by a chemist, and to this day every soap is stamped individually and wrapped by hand.
Castelbel is a soap and fragrance manufactory from Portugal whose name has two parts. “Castel” stands for its home town of Castêlo da Maia, “Bel” for the Portuguese word beleza, beauty. Around 200 people work at the factory just outside Porto today, and the soaps travel to more than 50 countries.
A chemist founds a soap manufactory
Castelbel was founded in 1999 in Castêlo da Maia by Aquiles Barros, a chemical engineer. For four decades he taught at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. Before going into business for himself, he had worked at one of the city’s old soap factories, where he learned how oils, scent and paper become a gift.
Production began in the second half of 2000 with six employees. At first the young company made soaps for a fragrance brand from New York, later for other well-known houses as well. Back then, their name was on the packaging rather than its own. One sentence from the founder still sums up the spirit of the manufactory: “We don't make soaps, we make gifts.”
Only in 2006 did Castelbel launch its own brand for body and home, and a year later the Portus Cale line followed. Its name is the old name of the settlement at the mouth of the Douro from which Porto grew and which gave the whole country its name.
The small business with six people has since become a manufactory with its own shops. Besides the factory shop in Maia there are stores in Porto, Lisbon and Braga, and since 2018 Castelbel has also been selling to the world through its own online shop.
Stamped, wrapped and filled by hand
Every Castelbel soap is stamped individually, and the stamps have always been made by the same craftsman. Then each piece is wrapped in paper by hand.
The illustrations on the paper are drawn by the in-house design team in Castêlo da Maia, from lavender blossoms and tile patterns to packaging with gold leaf. In 2019 around a hundred employees wrapped soaps by hand in one large hall, and more than nine out of ten people at the factory are women.
The soaps are made on a plant-based soap base, for many varieties from olive and coconut oil, and they lather soft and creamy. The scented candles are also filled by hand at the manufactory. For some vessels of the Portus Cale line, Castelbel works with Portuguese master ceramicists. The diffuser fragrance oil is made on an oily base without alcohol, so it rises slowly through the wooden reeds into the room.
Since 2019 Castelbel has been working in a new factory of around 5,500 square metres in Castêlo da Maia. Even then almost 30,000 soaps were made there in a single day. And yet none of them leaves the house without having passed through someone’s hands.
Ambiente, the classic soap from Portugal
The Ambiente series is Castelbel’s quietest line, made for bathroom, kitchen and linen cupboard. Its scents are called Lavender, Verbena, Cotton Flower and White Jasmine. Each of them has its own paper with drawn blossoms, sprigs or cotton bolls. They come as a 150-gram bar of soap, as a 40-gram guest soap and in a soap gift set with three bars.
There is also liquid soap in a dispenser, hand cream in a tube, scented candle and room fragrance, so one scent can reach from the washbasin to the living room. The fragranced drawer liners go into drawers and suitcases so that linen and jumpers smell softly of lavender or verbena. The reed diffusers with wooden sticks come in 100 and 250 millilitres. When the bottle is empty after a few months, a matching refill tops it up again.
Portus Cale with ceramics and gold leaf
The Portus Cale line is Castelbel’s most elaborate, with layered fragrances, ceramic vessels and packaging that gleams with gold leaf. It grew out of three fragrance lines that Castelbel had developed for an American department store. White Crane smells of yuzu, vetiver and mandarin, Gold & Blue combines jasmine and pink pepper in blue and white paper.
Ruby Red is inspired by port wine, Rosé Blush comes in a soft pink, and Hajjar Blanc turns warm and oriental. Black Edition is dressed entirely in black. Each of these fragrance worlds comes in several forms, from the small 40-gram guest soap to the scented candle in a ceramic vessel and the large 250-millilitre diffuser. If you want to carry one scent through the whole home, you will find it at the washbasin, on the sideboard and next to the sofa.
Sardines, tiles and soaps from Porto
With the Castelbel Sardine, Portugal’s best-known fish moves into the kitchen. The fish-shaped soap hangs from a cord at the tap and smells of sea salt and lemon. There is also a candle, a room fragrance, a kitchen towel and a second sardine that smells of orange and rosemary. For a special edition in 2021 the Portuguese illustrator Mariana A Miserável drew the fish, and the sardine has long been one of the manufactory’s best sellers.
The Tiles line pays tribute to the azulejos, the painted tiles on Portuguese façades, and each soap carries a small, real tile alongside its tile-patterned paper.
Soaps such as Lisboa, A Moda do Porto or Da Costa do Algarve capture cities and coasts as scent. When the city of Porto was looking for a fragrance for its city brand in 2024, the choice fell on Castelbel. This led to three soaps in the Castelbel x Porto. series, scented with camellia, wine and sea breeze, available since December 2024.
At the end of the year, Christmas soaps in festive paper join the range. The Gentlemen's Club and the Botanicals round it off with men’s fragrances and herbal soaps.
From the washbasin to the guest bathroom
A Castelbel bar of soap lasts longest when it dries between uses on a dish that lets the water drain away. Unopened, it keeps scenting the linen cupboard until it eventually makes its way to the washbasin. As a guest soap it fits into any small dish next to the towel. The diffusers spread their scent more evenly when the reeds are turned every one to two weeks.
With scented candles it pays to wait the first time until the wax has melted right to the edge, because otherwise the candle burns a tunnel and wastes scent. A trimmed wick keeps the flame calm, and after a few hours of burning the wax should set again before the candle is lit a second time.
Because the packaging already looks like a small present, Castelbel’s soap gift sets and candles are popular gifts for birthdays, housewarmings and Advent. What is currently in stock you can see in the grid below, sorted by what our customers take home most often.
